life will be an inspiration to her two little girls. and jonathan blunk from reno. just 26 years old but a veteran of three navy tours whose family and friends will always know that in that theater he gave his own life to save another. >> the tragic losses of a senseless traj dichgedytragedy. our thoughts and prayers are with the loved ones of those lost in the colorado shooting. that's "the ed show." i'm michael dyson in for ed schultz. ezra klein is in for rachel mad dow tonight. ezra klein is filling in for rachel maddow tonight. >> good evening and thank you very much. thank you to you at home for staying with us for this hour. rachel has the night off. in colorado today, the suspect in last week's mass shooting in the denver suburb appears in court for the first time. james holmes had what is called a first advisement this morning. he sat with one of his court apointed attorneys. reporters in the courtroom said his lawyer shielded him from

victims of the shooting and the relatives who had come for the hearing. he is not expected to be charged formally in the case until next week. the trial itself could be as much as a year away. prosecutors say the man stormed into a midnight premiere of the new batman movie last week in the city of aurora. he came in with tear gas and guns and wearing enough protective gear that police almost reportedly mistook him for one of their own. though officers arrived in two minutes, he managed to kill 12 people and wound 58 others. he was armed with a pair of glock handguns, a 12-gauge shotgun, and an ar-15 assault rifle. all appear to have been purchased legally. law enforcement in colorado said he had stockpiled bullets before the massacre. he stored up 6,000 rounds buying from ammunition suppliers online. the list includes 3,000 rounds for handguns, 3,000 for the assault rifle, and 350 shells for the shotgun. just like the guns used in

friday night's massacres, all of the bullets were also purchased legally. for the victims, the family and friends, for aurora and the rest of the country, the shootings were stunning, traumatic, and as horrible as an event can be. to know about it is to be full of grief. to know about it is to wish the friends and family of the victims comfort and healing. it's also to wonder whether we could have done anything, anything at all to stop it or whether there was something more we can do to stop the next madman who wants to do something like it. since the mass shooting in aurora, we have been told over and again we must avoid politicizing what happened. what that means is don't have that conversation. don't talk about gun control. we should be clear. when one of the first things in a particular set of politicians do after a tragedy is warn other political actors not to talk about a certain set of policies, that is almost by definition politicization.

the argument itself is politics. they're laying a kind of political trap for those who would talk about gun control in the aftermath of aurora. the threat is if you talk about gun control, we'll punish you, we'll punish you by accusing you of politicizing a senseless tragedy, by trying to profit from a horror. that is not just a political argument. it is in fact a political strategy, one that favors those who prefer the status quo to reform of the nation's gun control laws. max reed, a writer at gawker had i think the right take about the argument. he wrote, james holmes did not materialize in a movie theater in aurora free of any relationship to law and authority and the structures of power in this country, nor did he exit those relationships and structures by murdering 12 people and injuring several dozen more. before he entered the theater, he purchased guns whether legally or illegally under a framework of laws and regulations governed and negotiated by politics. in the parking lot outside, he was arrested by a police force whose salaries, equipment, and

rights were shaped and determined by politics. you cannot politicize a tragedy because a tragedy is already political. when you talk about the tragedy, you're already talking about politics. but for all that, we must be careful when a specific tragedy or event leads to a broad national conversation. the thing about a horror like aurora, the reason the whole country is talking about it and grieving over it, is that it is unusual. it is rare. and as such, it is dangerous to generalize from it. so tonight on "the rach el maddw show," we're going to try to step back a moment. it will be some time before we truly understand what happened in colorado last week, if we ever do, but it is possible to understand broader facts about guns, about gun violence, and about gun control in the united states of america. and one thing we can say for sure, to begin, is that america is an unusually violent country. this chart comes from kjeron

healey, a social yol -- sociologist from duke university. they show deaths from assault in 23 develops nations not including our own. that line way up there, above all others, that line shows deaths from assault in the u.s. we're an extremely violent country, it's true, but look at this. we're not nearly so violent as we used to be. our assault rate peaked in the late 1970s, and awful events like aurora notwithstanding have been falling continuously ever since. within america, the south is by far the most violent region. it has the most deaths from assault. then comes the wests where the shootings happens followed by the midwest and northeast. thanks again to karen for this chart. also, gun ownership is on the decline. the percentage of american households that say they own a pistol or a shotgun is about half what it was 40 years ago, according to the general social survey. and the most recent numbers from gallup which aren't on the graph

have show an uptick in gun ownership. although we don't yet know if that is a statistical blip or the beginning of a reversal in the trip. this map, which we made with data from the new england journal of medicine, compares a number of suicides by gun ownership rates. it's four times as high in states with a lot of firearms. even when you factor in suicide by other means, any means at all, states with a high rate of gun ownership still experience twice as many suicide. gun ownership and suicide are in the evidence links. and so are gun ownership and homicide. i don't actually have a graph for this one, but the harvard injury control research center assessed the literature on gun and homicide and found that more guns tends to lead to more murders. this holds true whether you're looking at different countries or states in this country. it remains true after you control things for poverty and urbanization. as for the role of gun control

laws, economist richard florida finds in states with relatively strict laws, fewer people die from gunfire. states with relatively looser gun control have a higher rate of death from guns. yet for all that, gun control is not popular. and it is getting even less popular. gallup has been asking people whether they want stricter gun control laws since 1990. the number of people who favor them has fallen by a lot. the number calling for either looser laws or the status quo has nearly tripled. and in recent years has come to be larger than the number calling for stricter gun laws. that is some of what we know about americans and guns and violence. we're not as violent a nation as we once were though we are violent and gun ownership tracks with violence and suicide and so do loose gun laws, which people say they prefer. for all that, we should be clear. there are no easy answers to what happened in aurora. not in why it happened and not in how to stop it. james holmes had no criminal

record. so it would be difficult to deny him weaponry under any gun control regime at all. he had a number of legal explosives in his home. he could have turned to that method of murder. if he wasn't capable of getting high amounts of weaponry fast enough. we must be humble when thinking about what in this particular case could have been done. but we cannot be scared away from thinking about what in the future we might yet do. joining us now is michael nutter, mayor of philadelphia and a member of mayors against illegal guns. mayor nutter, today, announced a new partnership with the department of justice for the reduction of violent crime in philadelphia. mayor nutter, thank you so much for joining me tonight. >> thank you, ezra. >> after the shooting in colorado, you issued a statement that was equal parts condolences and a call for stricter gun safety laws. so did some other mayors like mayor bloomberg. can these two ideas go together? can we have a discussion over gun control and aurora that is not disrespectful to the victims?

>> absolutely. and again, let me take a moment to just express my deepest condolences to the family members who lost loved ones in that carnage just a few days ago. and those who are injured and still recovering. we wish all of them a speedy recovery and hopefully a healing in aurora. i have talked to the mayor out there, mayor hogan, as well as the nearby mayor, mayor hancock, and anything that we can do from philadelphia or through the u.s. conference of mayors, certainly we extend ourselves and just continue to pray for the people in that city and those who were killed and injured. i think we have to be able to be mature enough to have a legitimate non-hysterical, adult conversation about gun safety and violence prevention. this is not a conversation about taking someone's gun away. i'm a big supporter of the second amendment, but as i have

said on numerous occasions, i also believe i have a first amendment right not to be shot. those two ideas are not in conflict with each other. with those -- with any right comes a significant amount of responsibility. clearly, there's something wrong with that individual, but beyond that, we need systems in place to red flag, if you will, some of the things we now know in the aftermath that apparently we didn't know just in the last -- wednesday or thursday. 6,000 rounds, the purchase of an assault rifle or weapon, for what reason would any individual, other than law enforcement or military, need such weaponry? body armor, again, those are things that law enforcement and military use. and so i think that this issue, we have seen aurora, the

shooting of a member of congress, representative giffords, columbine, virginia tech, the list goes on and on and on. just over the last ten to 20 years, we go through these situations, and much is talked about. we need some action. we need reasonable, rational, gun safety regulations. procedures in place for violence prevention. you said earlier that you almost can't have a discussion, and it becomes political. no one thought that in the aftermath of 9/11. now, we did a lot of things after 9/11. 11 years ago. we created a whole new federal agency called the department of homeland security. as well as the tsa. billions of dollars have been spent to make sure that we're safe as we fly. no one has said that airplanes were not going to go up in the

sky. no one said that people couldn't ride. we put in extraordinary measures to red flag and act as preventative measures to ensure airline safety and that everyone would be safe. well, we need the same thing, quite honestly, on the streets of america, in our cities and metro areas all across the country. >> i have been struck between the difference of mayors in different cities like you and mayor bloomberg, who have been aggressive trying to talk about gun control, and national politicians like president obama and mitt romney have backed away from such talk entirely. what is different on the local level that accounts for the different political approaches we're seeing? >> well, i can't speak to the moment, either mr. romney or the president has spoken out, and i expect that he will do so again in the future at an appropriate time. i think for mayors like mayor bloomberg, he and mayor menino out of boston are co-chairs of mayors against illegal guns. i see it myself.

every mayor is really on the front line when it comes to public safety issues. if someone is shot or killed in our cities, the public where we live expect us to do something. and so that's why you're hearing a great deal from the mayors. we have a duty and responsibility on the ground to try to solve these issues, prevent tragedy, and we certainly need additional help and resources. >> michael nutter, mayor of the great city of philadelphia. thank you so much for your time tonight. >> thank you. presidential politics resume today with a note to mitt romney. if you want to attack president obama on a certain position, make sure there's no videotape out there that shows you endorsing the exact same idea using the exact same language. proving the position you were attacking is in fact one you also believe. mitt romney caught on tape, next. [ male announcer ] how do you trade?

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a moment of geek tonight

that is all at once a tragedy, a comedy, a scientific mystery, and a self-help cautionary tale. also, it describes a practice, and i can't emphasize this enough, you should not try at home. or actually anywhere. just don't do it. and it really doesn't make sense to pay for the opportunity to try it. though some actually do that. some very hazardous but very awesome geekdom coming up. [ male announcer ] this is rudy. his morning starts with arthritis pain. and two pills. afternoon's overhaul starts with more pain. more pills. triple checking hydraulics. the evening brings more pain. so, back to more pills. almost done, when... hang on. stan's doctor recommended aleve. it can keep pain away all day with fewer pills than tylenol.

this is rudy. who switched to aleve. and two pills for a day free of pain. ♪ [ female announcer ] and try aleve for relief from tough headaches. [ female announcer ] and try aleve this is new york state. we built the first railway, the first trade route to the west, the greatest empires. then, some said, we lost our edge. well today, there's a new new york state. one that's working to attract businesses and create jobs. a place where innovation meets determination... and businesses lead the world. the new new york works for business. find out how it can work for yours at thenewny.com. last week, the 2012 presidential campaign was dominated by one remark that president obama made at a campaign stop in roanoke,

virginia. you did not build that. all at once, the entire republican campaign apparatus mobilized itself around the one comment from obama. now, president obama was saying something fairly clear. i mean, you can listen to it yourself. >> if you have been successful, you didn't get there on your own. you didn't get there on your own. if you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. there was a great teacher somewhere in your life. somebody helped to create this unbelievable american system that we have that allowed you to thrive. someone invested in roads and bridges. if you have a business, you didn't build that. somebody else made that happen. the point is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative but also because we do things together. >> in the annals of controversy political statements, this should not be a particularly controversial one.

it's the idea that human beings rely on each other as well as themselves. that they rely on the societies they live in as well in order to succeed. it is the idea that if you were born in north korea, you would not have the same career t trajectory as if you were born in america. the idea if you love math but got here before newton invented calculus, you would have had a tougher time of it. the institutions we have here matter, infrastructure matters, trains matter, the teacher you had in eighth grade matters, the support your parents gave you matters. and you, of course, matter. as americans we know all that is true. without a doubt true. and it's part of why we call this the greatest country in the world. if individuals were all that mattered, why would you care what country you were in? last week, republicans pretended not to know any of that. >> he said this.

if you got a business, you didn't build that. somebody else made that happen. to say that steve jobs didn't build apple, that henry ford didn't build ford motor, that papa john didn't build papa john pizza -- to say something like that is not just foolishness, it's insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in america, and it's wrong. >> i got to be honest, i tune out of these things sometimes, and this is one of those times. i didn't take any of it seriously when it was unfolding last week, not a word of it. because the fact of the matter is mitt romney is not a stupid man. he knows better. i mean, mitt romney ran bain capital. it was a firm that went in and tried to help different people helping other businesses become successful again. and it did so in large part with help from the government. they used government tax deductions to carry out

essentially interest finance takeovers in order to bring these companies back to profitability or barring that to strip them bare before they turn them out into bankruptcy. he's telling them if those businesses had not had access to romney and their team, they would have been in much worse shape. in any telling, if they had not had access to outside financing and taxing to death, they would have been in much worse shape. romney knows that. he knows the government has a role to play in helping businesses succeed, that other people have a role to play in helping businesses succeed. his criticism to the contrary struck me as ridiculous and insincere. but republicans this week are still pushing this thing really hard. today, the rnc held a conference call with a pair of small business owners to highlight president obama's supposedly offensive comments. this was the backdrop at a mitt romney business round table in california. we did build it, it says. i bet romney didn't actually build that banner, but whatever any suspicions, i didn't have a

way to prove that romney knew better. actually, i didn't have proof until today. today, when video came out of mitt romney telling olympic athletes back in 2002, you didn't build it. >> you guys pushed yourselves, drove yourselves, sacrificed and trained time and again, winning and losing. you olympians know you didn't get here solely on your own power. for most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your hopes, coaches guided, all communities built venues and organized competitions. all olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. we have already cheered the olympians. let's also cheer the parents, coaches, and communities. all right. >> got that, olympians? you didn't build it. you couldn't possibly have achieved what you have achieved to this point without the help of others. without the help sometimes of even the government which helped build the venues you compete in.

i couldn't believe that quote when i first watched it, actually. like david axelrod went back in time and put the precise words he needed into mitt romney's mouth. romney even praises government in there. he didn't need to do that. he didn't need to bring up venues, but he praises government. you know, the reason he said it is it's all true. you could make a pretty good case that, say, a marathon runner did it mostly on his own, but most athletes like most benefits benefit from the institutions that exist in their societies. mitt romney knows that. he knows that when it comes to olympic athletes and he knows that when it comes to american businesses. this gets to something larger that we are seeing a lot right now in american politics. the effort to take relatively modest policy differences and blow them up into gigantic yawning chasms of philosophical difference. in reality, the difference between barack obama and mitt romney in terms of specific policy that comes from the idea

you didn't build that or you did build that, is about a percentage point of gdp and taxes. maybe a little more or less depending on how you score the tax cut plan. mitt romney doesn't think there should be no taxes, he doesn't think there should be no public investment, and barack obama doesn't think we should have a 100% tax rate and 75 times more public investment. they both think we should have taxes that people pay because we're better off for helping one another out and both men think we should have public investment and public goods because there are things we all need to band together to do collectively if year going to succeed individually. the question is simply where to put the balance between the two. now, mitt romney may want to admit this, but he doesn't really have a choice anymore because the fact of the matter is he already admitted it. he admitted it ten years ago when he was kicking off one of the greatest spectacles to

individual achievement one can possibly imagine, and he told those athletes at that time in effect, you didn't build it. mitt romney was right back then about those athletes. they were helped even though they did much on their own. he knows he's wrong right now as he tries to run against obama's comments on american businesses. joining us now is e.j. dionne, washington post columnist, brookings institution senior fellow and the author of "divided political heart" which i'm told bill clinton has been talking up in public speeches. congrats on that. that's a lot to do all on your own. busy guy. >> i didn't build it myself. i had a great editor, a lot of friends, great colleagues. >> one of the things you talk about in the book, which is wonderful, bill clinton is right, is that in american history, there have been these competing threads between individualism and the emphasis on community and what we need to do together. it seems, at least to me, and i'm not the historian you are,

that in recent years, much of that has been jettisoned by the republican party in an effort to paint themselves as the saviors of free enterprise and paint the democrats and obama as something radically alien and outside the american consensus. is that a fair judgment? >> that's a fair judgment. i think you had two things happen at the same time. i think you had the republicans entirely abandon what had been for them and for conservatism, a very strong communitarian commitment. bill buckley shortly before he died -- >> editor of national review. conservative journal. >> right. and bill buckley wrote a book called "gratitude" where he talked about what we owe back for growing up in this society, for being nurtured by it, for being protected by it. i.e., we didn't do that on our own. if he tried to run on that book in a republican primary now, he would lose. in the meantime, obama and the democrats are really just talking about the traditional american balance between our love of community and liberty, between our respect for the role of private enterprise and of government.

in building up the country. and so they have to invent a whole tale in order to cast the traditional american idea as some form of socialism. it's exactly what they did on the health care bill, as you know better than anyone. a heritage foundation idea. >> mitt romney idea. >> a mitt romney idea. he was really -- >> he didn't build that on his own, the heritage foundation and others helped him. >> my state, he doesn't want to talk about much. and they have just walked away from all that. and mitt romney has sounded consistently better ten years ago than he did once he decided to run for president. >> one interesting thread in this primary is it's completely normal to paint the opposing party's candidate as more extreme than they are. you want to do that. what isn't quite as normal is to spend so much time painting yourself as more extreme than you really are. there hasn't been a pivot as far as i have been able to tell from primary election romney to general election romney.

a lot of things people assumed would fall off have remained and a lot of the arguments have remained the same. in that way he has been consistent, but somewhat unusually. he's been immoderately consistent. >> good word. like the etch-a-sketch is jammed. he was signaling the campaign aid, was signalling, well, we're going to do an adjustment after the primary. i think he's decided that you can flip or you can flop, but you can't flip and flop and flip and flop. so i think there's some reluctance to change again on his part, but this is what the republican party has become. in my book, i talk about people like jacob javetts, a very progressive republican. could you imagine someone like javetts, who i quoted him in the book because he sounds so much like president obama. president obama in so many ways sounds like a moderate or liberal republican from 20 years ago right now. so romney is occupying this space, and i guess the republicans figure he doesn't want to run too far away from congress.

he doesn't want to blow up the party. and so he is sticking with positions that i think really are way to the right of where conservatives and republicans used to be. >> e.j. dionne, washington post columnist, msnbc contribute tortorcontributer, brookings institution, senior fellow and author of "our divided political heart." wonderful book. he didn't do it all on his own, but it's wonderful. >> thank you. >> tonight, as part of my career as a cable television dare devil, i will make my second attempt at something that has never been attempted before. i tried it the first time on this show. i survived my first try and i'm back tonight to defy the odds again. this time, with even more spectacular results. maybe. possibly. that is next. ask me what it's like when my tempur-pedic moves.

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on june 14th, i was lucky enough to be sitting in this chair, hosting this great show, and what was even more remarkable is what the staff here let me do. they let me do a whole segment on spanish bond yields. spanish bond yields. where else can you talk spanish bond yields? where else but the "rachel maddow show"? we called it the ezra klein challenge. the challenge was this. could i make you care about spanish bond yields in under two minutes? my argument was simple, if you're picking one indicator to watch to see if it was going to survive or fall, you would pick spanish bond yields because it

would be bad if greece had to leave the euro, but it would be survivable. there is no world where spain goes down and the euro endures. if spain goes down, the euro is going down. spanish bond yields, the thing you need to remember is the higher a bond yield is, the more a country is having to pay when they borrow money. if bond yields keep going up, then spain can't afford to borrow the money necessary to finance itself, and the eurozone is going down. and that means our economy might be going down, too. well, since i did that segment, spanish bond yields have kept going up. this graph may not look so scary, those two lines, but it is actually terrifying. it's spanish bond yields at record highs. this is way above the level which the euro, which spain and the euro can survive. tonight's ezra klein challenge is to explain why this happened. have we got the clock here? all right. ready, set, go. austerity isn't working. we could actually just stop the

clock there, but i have 1:55. tons of time, so look, spain has been doing what the eurozone has asked them to do. they're doing austerity. they're cutting budgets. they're trying. everybody agrees they have been a good faith actor. but that treatment is driving them deeper and deeper into recession, and these bond yields are the market, the market saying this is not working. this is the wrong medicine. something else needs to be done. and you know what else? it's no mystery what needs to be done. the eurozone has a central bank. that central bank could stop this run tomorrow if they're willing to commit to back spain up. but they haven't been. they have less money than we do. this could end if they tied themselves together fiscally the way the united states has done, but they haven't been willing to do that. here they are and there spain goes, and wow, i still have a lot of extra time. we got through the fact that a high spanish debt yield is a terrible and scary number that should concern you. maybe we go back through credit

default swaps or maybe libor. actually, being told we could go to commercial. next time, maybe we'll do libor. so anyway, i've been to a lot of places. you know, i've helped a lot of people save a lot of money. but today...( sfx: loud noise of large metal object hitting the ground) things have been a little strange. (sfx: sound of piano smashing) roadrunner: meep meep. meep meep? (sfx: loud thud sound) what a strange place. geico®. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

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all right, you want the truth? i don't like scary movies or scary books or scary television shows. it's just not my thing. the one scary thing i am into, scary political science, and one of the scariest political scientists around is princeton's martin gilens. what he has done is pore through hundreds and thousands of polls looking at what americans of different economic levels wants to happen in politics. then he looks at what really happens. the story he tells isn't that scary. in fact, it's probably what you expect. the political system is likelier to listen to the affluent than the poor or middle class. what i didn't expect is what happened when the affluent disagreed with the poor and middle class. according to the data, it tends to at those moments ignore the poor and middle class entirely. joining me now so he can scare you the way he has scared me so

many times is martin gilens, the author of the new book that came out sunday, "affluence and influence." professor, thank you so much for being here. >> my pleasure. >> i want to make sure i understood this right. your research shows that when the affluent disagree with the poor and middle class, they cease to matter, is that correct? >> in ordinary circumstances, which is to say most of the time, that's exactly right. when preferences diverge, the government responds pretty strongly to the preferences to the affluent and not at all to the preferences of the middle class or the poor. >> the follow-up question is how can that be sustainable? when we talk about the affluent, we're talking about the top 10% of the income distribution. it's a lot of people but not enough to win an election. how can politicians be ignoring the opinions of so many folks lower on the income scale and keep getting reelected?

>> that's a good question and it has to do with the exceptions to the pattern. there are political circumstances which force policymakers, office holders, to respond to what the public wants and more equally to what low and high income americans want. those circumstances are the proximity of an election, especially a presidential election, and circumstances where the control of government is uncertain or divided. and in those cases, parties will be unwilling to pay the price that pursuing unpopular policies would exact. >> so this sounds really bad to folks, but one argument you hear people make, i have heard people make, anyway, is that it doesn't really matter. we're looking at the wrong thing. that what voters want isn't for politicians to follow their opinions on policy but for politicians to deliver a rising standard of living. if that comes from choices that are different than the ones the voters would have made, so be it. >> there certainly are voters whose primary concern in an election is how either their own

household is doing or more commonly, how the country is doing economically. but there are many voters, most voters, who take into account a much broader segment of issues and set of considerations, and for them, where a politician stands on a variety of things are important and voting is sometimes a matter of balancing economic performance against other kinds of considerations. >> so one of the findings in your book i found fascinating, i wouldn't have expected, you say gridlock makes parties more responsive because it acts as a filter because only very popular policies can get through gridlock. and you say extremely competitive elections help because they only have reason to let popular policies go through. but when i look at the last few years of gridlock and fierce party competition, i see a political system being badly governed and much more to the point, i see a policy that is really, really unhappy. right now the parties are very

closely matched. there's tons of gridlock, and congress is at its lowest approval rating since we started surveying that. doesn't that show the kind of idea that responsiveness is a wise goal for us to strive for? >> it's only one element of what we would want from the government. it's true that gridlock has negative consequences, and they're very evident, but it also has this positive side which i think has gone unrecognized previously. that is under the circumstances, when not much policy is adopted, it doesn't mean that government is doing better, but it does mean those policies that are adopted tend to be more popular. it's a bit of a silver lining to an otherwise rather gray cloud. >> you're not that scary after all. martin gilens. author of "affluence and influence" which is terrific. thank you very much for being here. >> my pleasure. attention cartographers, if

a certain republican congressman has his way, the world's maps will need to be redrawn to honor the star of the movie "cattle queen of montana." that is straight ahead. you know, we're a little early for this thing... want to hop in the back and get weird? no. family vacation... vegas. ♪ no. no. give it a big yank! really? yeah! [ knock on window ] no! no. ♪ ugh, no! [ sighs ] we can have hotdogs for dinner?! yes. [ male announcer ] in a world filled with "no," it's nice to finally say "yes." new oscar mayer selects hotdogs. made with 100% beef and no artificial preservatives. it's yes food. i don't have to use gas. i am probably going to the gas station about once a month. drive around town all the time doing errands and never ever have to fill up gas in the city. i very rarely put gas in my chevy volt. last time i was at a gas station was about...i would say... two months ago. the last time i went to the gas station

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in august of 1961, the government of east germany began

construction on a giant wall around the city of west berlin, which happened to lay in the middle of east berlin. you got that? it was as cold as a cold war could be. and it stayed that way for more than 25 years. complete with proxy wars, missile threats, nuclear arms build-ups and john le carr spy novels. then in june of '87, president ronald reagan visited the berlin wall and said these very dramatic and very famous words. >> mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall. the wall did come down about a year later. and it made ronald reagan look pretty good. but reagan was just a man, right? and he's not even with us today, so how does he help us now? well, it appears some republican politicians believe there's some kind of problem solving nation protecting magic power in invoking the very name ronald reagan, in uttering the words ronald reagan.

you can just say ronald reagan like a spell, and wonderful things begin to happen. in the 2008 presidential campaign, former massachusetts governor mitt romney introduced his reagan zone of economic freedom. not the romney zone of economic freedom, mr. romney does not have that sort of power yet. it was the reagan zone of economic freedom. president obama in his foreign policy team have pursued a policy of taking china's misbehavior to the world trade organization to try to stop china from cheating wherever possible and question their human rights, but romney thinks that turns america into a door mat. he thinks president obama is letting china walk all over him. he would not push china on that wto stuff. his solution instead is to create a reagan zone. a reagan zone for all of the countries around china. while it is extremely unlikely china would join the reagan

zone, our offer to allow china to join would modify their trade and industrial behior. seriously, that's the plan. it's up there on the current campaign website. we create the zone, china says no to the zone, but the zone still gets china to participate in free trade on fair terms because, you know, reagan. but governor romney's reagan zone has been badly outdone in their devotion to those two magical words that solve problems by their very incantation. the prize for the assumption currently goes to republican congressman darrell issa. he's probably the most famous for holding all-male hearings about contraception and charging the attorney general of the united states with contempt. but congressman issa recently found time in his schedule to hold the president reagan can still hold all our problems

sweepstakes. mr. issa's new bill would rename all the coastal water. it would be renamed reagan water. this slice of the world right here includes the united states and its territories there in the light green. the areas of blue, extending from 2 to 300 nautical miles offshore is something called the nautical zone. he wants to rename them the reagan zone. president reagan established the so-called eez in 1983 to show that the united states has the ability of exploiting and researching the zone. because of that, darrell issa wants to name water after ronald

reagan. it turns out i say darrell tries to sell the country on the reagan water bill at various intervals, having passed it at various times in congress. the process of renaming the ocean waters reagan land is virtually impossible. for instance, i went to the beach this weekend. >> how was the romney coldness? >> when that wasn't his title, if you would have vipred your cara larm and they were warned ex clis itly by a loud voice, the voice, in fact, of darrell issa itself. which means that congressman darrell issa's proposal comes with the possibility of extra security for our great nation.

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and i thought "i can't do this, it's just too hard." then there was a moment. when i decided to find a way to keep going. go for olympic gold and go to college too. [ male announcer ] every day we help students earn

their bachelor's or master's degree for tomorrow's careers. this is your moment. let nothing stand in your way. devry university, proud to support the education of our u.s. olympic team. meet the star of tonight's geeks, tony roberts. he is really tall and will be speaking really loudly into a headset microphone while pacing energetically on a stage for hours at a time. he'll be inspiring his listeners to walk through fire to release their live prowess, which apparently looks something like this, according to a video posted on youtube.

. >> whoo! >> i don't know if that was a bona fide tony robins event as listed on the website. you have some loudness at the event and people whooping and hollering while he walks over hot coals. you have to do it without getting burned. as i said, the event usually ends with huge whoops and empowerment. last week, however, the jubilee was replaced by screams of pain while they get their feet

treated. he's been doing this for decades, but apparently this led their company to say they're working with authorities to improve safety. i have a suggestion for them right now about how to improve the safety of the hot coal thing. step one. do not do the hot coal thing anymore. but they're going to do it. perha perhaps. charcoal is a poor conductor of heat. as a medic writer who tried walking in 1985 put it, quote, perhaps that is easier to see it through the wood and would they quick burn? >> the so-called myth busters also tested this back in '08. they look for a piece of charcoal that was heated 900

weeds. apparently, ashen and in theory, you should be able to pick up one of these goals which on one side is 950 degrees, and on the charles and have my food in the palm of my hands. they're making a fire significantly less hot to the touch. not as hot as you would like but not as hot as advertised. then there's the rate of speed as you walk. >> and the first set of results up for analysis is the high-speed camera shots showing exactly how much toe touching time there is. >> so it turns out that my foot was only in contact with the hot coals from heel to toe